


Paradox Space Gay(s)

by orphan_account



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: M/M, i cant believe its 2018 and im doing this shit, lots of hs references bc im filthy, self indulgent zadr bc i fuckign can, this is ooc but fuck u, unedited so. be prepared for that, zim is nb also dib is trans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-07-04 02:29:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15831903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: UPDATE: as of 1/19/19 this book is over. i don't ship zadr; i used to back when i first wrote these chapters. i'm leaving these up on my profile, as i feel they are far from poorly done but i'm not ever going to pick these back up, apologies.





	1. Chapter 1

Dib had sort of caved in after all those years, though he'd never admit it. For kid who'd gone to Skool with a literal alien, a coffee shop job was far from the "paranormal experience" he'd been hoping for. 

Depression hits hard when you realize that nobody is going to believe a word that comes out of your mouth, and so he'd especially grown lazy there. He hadn't seen Zim in forever, and since the Earth was still not destroyed, he figured that there wasn't any real reason for him to carry on. 

So instead, in an attempt to make up for his lost time as a teenager (which is hard when you're seventeen and you threw your life away when you were ten), Dib picked up his coffee shop job. But it was in-fucking-credibly hard to regain your lost teenage years when the alien you'd been hoping to catch for so long entered your workplace and asked about reccomendations. 

Dib's throat choked up, but he still managed to get out a familiar sound: "ZIM?" 

"Yes, yes, that is me. I am Zim! Now, do you think a latte would be more adequate, or a-" 

"ZIM? What are you doing here?" He was shocked out of his mind. Zim had been missing for a year, and he'd basically given up all thoughts of seeing him again. Every last one. But here he was, prancing back into town in his ratty old wig and contacts that looked like the same ones he'd used since they first met, and his little dog-slash-robot companion GIR staring up at him from the side.

"Ordering coffee. Now, if I may-" He may not.

"BUT master! I don't like coffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee." GIR screeched loud enough for everyone within a 12-mile radius to hear, for a time period no less than ten minutes, but of course, nobody did. 

"Quiet, GIR." He snapped after long enough. GIR quieted down, but that didn't stop him from having what resembled a stroke on the floor, whispering "hee-yaw" to himself. Dib raised his eyebrows. The ringing hadn't stopped, but now he knew wherever Zim had been, it sure as hell hadn't been fixing his defective SIR unit. 

"Now, Dib-thing, I would like one coffee." He ordered, as if he were at a simple coffee shop where he hadn't been in what Dib deemed his "kismesis" (his Homestuck phase had held hands with and cradled his eternal Zim phase) for as long as he'd known him. 

Dib took this as an opportunity to to what he liked. The old him would have spiked Zim's coffee, and he had half a mind to, so he made a mini compromise between Dibs and continually mixed all the shit he could find for about five minutes while Zim watched, clearly uninterested in what Dib was doing. It was kind of strange that Zim would just let Dib prepare a drink for him without giving even half of his shits, but Dib was okay with that. He didn't care for alien shit either. 

Zim snatched the coffee as soon as Dib handed it across the counter, chugged the entire thing, and fed the paper cup to GIR. Dib, astounded as to what the fuck was going on, watched as Zim walked away casually, sliding a piece of paper in the tip jar and nothing else. 

He waited until Zim was out of his line of vision and did two things: he pulled the little slip out of the jar, and added some money to the register. 

The paper had a shitty "I am in kindergarten and just learned about the hamburger and hotdog technique" feel to it, so it was safe for him to say it was probably loaded with Zim's bullshit, and he was not wrong. 

Dib could barely interpret a line of the garbage shoved before him, but he did recognize a phone number. 

Of course, it was probably trapped and was set to fucking destroy him as soon as he dialed the line, but that didn't atop him from giving it a call the instant he got home from work.

Dib couldn't have caught Zim at a worse time, but regardless, the Irken picked up the phone before even one ring could be completed.

He could feel Zim squint into the phone. "Who is this?" 

"It's me. You know. Dib. The one that's been trying to expose you as an alien for eight or so years."

"Oh! Well in that case, hello Dib," The way he said his name sent shivers down his spine, and he wasn't completely sure that it was out of distaste for Zim.

"Zim!" He yelled back in response, almost like a reflex. "What do you want from me?" 

Zim laughed- his laugh was far from pleasant to listen to and it had drilled its way into Dib's head years ago. It had been a while, however, so it wasn't as grating. 

"I want... you! To come to my base! ... And, er, bring snacks!" He could hear the tiny invader mashing at all the buttons on his phone in a sore attempt to turn it off. 

Dib, more confused than ever, pondered the conversation for over an hour, both with and without Gaz. 

"He's up to something Gaz, I can feel it."

"You always say that. And although it's never wrong, you're forgetting that Zim is an absolute dumbass." She didn't even look up from her Game Slave as she spoke, apathetic as always. "Just shut up and stop whining about your boyfriend, Dib." 

"He's not my boyfriend, Gaz."

"Yeah, right, he's your 'kismesis.' Sorry. I'm not stuck in 2014." Dib internally cringed as he thought yet again of his Homestuck phase. 

"Gaz, that was literally four years ago. We are not talking more about those cursed days where I fused my DNA with that of an elephant's so I could turn my skin gray or that time when I accidentally transplanted horns onto my head."

"Tch. Accidentally."

Dib sighed. "Y'know, Gaz, sometimes it just seems like you really aren't interested in what I have to say."

Gaz finally glanced up from her Game Slave, just long enough to give a look to Dib- one that he knew very well meant "fuck you." 

"Took you fifteen years."

He attempted to rekindle their loving sibling conversation, but there was no hope, and he wound up leaving Gaz's room the same as how he'd entered, except the fact that Karkalicious was still vividly replaying in his head. Maybe it was still 2014. 

In the end, curiosity killed the cat, and he dug through the pantry, yanked out some chips, and walked down to Zim's house. 

It took quite a while, and quite a few wrong turns, but Dib made it. The house looked exactly the same as it had when Zim had first arrived, seven years ago, though he guessed it was close enough to eight.

It was eerie being able to get so close to Zim's house without even a glance from the gnomes, but he ignored it. He'd done it before, but that had been years ago, and didn't really count. He didn't even want to ever think about that one time.

GIR answered the door, his doggy disguise sitting in a pile next to the couch. "INTRUDER!" His yell wasn't nearly as loud as it had been at the shop, thank each and fucking every deity and Mothman. 

"I, I have chips?" GIR fucking screamed as he eyed the bag cradled between Dib's ribs and arm, but Dib wasn't about to be caught off-guard to the little robot's screeches yet again.  
"I'll give them to you if you let me in." 

"But the master wouldn't like that!" GIR cried from the floor. 

"He invited me here?" Dib said, more asking the empty air than actually making a statement. He wasn't technically lying, so he had no idea why he felt so hard-pressed to convince GIR on letting him in. 

"As I did, GIR." Zim came to Dib's rescue, but it didn't feel like a rescue. It felt more like he'd yanked Dib out one of those fake drowning boxes. "I told you, the waffles were for the Dib-stink." 

GIR's eyes became huge. "That's what those waffles were for? I thought they were for the computer." He stuck out his tongue, which made Dib reconsider quite a lot of his thoughts. 

Zim put the pieces of the puzzle together much faster than Dib could have. "You mean... You gave the computer our waffles? You put waffles inside the computer?"

GIR nodded his head to the point where it rolled off his shoulders. 

Zim pulled off a GIR-esque scream, shaking the tiny robot's body. His head looked up at him, still smiling. "You fool! Do you not realize what maple syrup will do to the computer?"

Dib had no idea what was going on, but for some vaguely reason it seemed like something the duo would do on a quite frequent routine. He lost himself in thought about what he had just seen, which kinda sucked ass, because he missed out on a lot of the conversation in front of him, which ended with:

"—GIR! How am I, Zim, supposed to have a date if the computer can't load anything! You ruined everything! Everything!" 

"Hold up... Did you say date?"

"Wh- I- No! You lie! Lies!" A typical Zim move, taking the quite blatantly obvious truth and calling it a 'lie.' Sadly enough, it had managed to actually work on every single person but the Membrane siblings so far. 

Dib laughed, before realized that that meant that, well, Zim wanted to take him on a date. He had no idea how to feel about that. I mean, there was fourteen year old Dib's year of realization, where he learned even more about his identity that he wanted to, which he projected into the Homestuck quadrant system. But cmon, if you haven't gotten over your eight-grade alien blackrom almost four years later? Well, you're just really sad then. 

"Zim, none of this bullshit! Did you ask me here on a date?" 

"Uh, duh! I can't believe you still haven't learned how to wrap your big head around what I have to say!" Zim cackled. Dib's head wasn't big. "So what do you think, Dibshit? Are you turning down Zim's offer?" Dib was a-fucking-stounded. He'd expected Zim to pull his usual tantrum bullshit, and he almost HAD, but this was an almost pleasant surprise. Almost. 

"You know what? Sure. Sure." He took Zim's outstreched hand (previously unmentioned) and braced himself for the horrors of a date with Zim.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol i feel like im being paid to sponsor hs and 2001
> 
> this is more like. filler than anything else.

Actually, it wasn't that horrible. The theater was relatively empty, and Zim  
paid for popcorn.

This gave Dib lots of time to think. Sure, a part of him relished in the fact that Zim had asked him out, but he knew there was something wrong. Aliens didn't just show up and ask Dib out on a regular basis, although he'd actually enjoy that a lot. 

He hadn't been paying much attention to the movie itself and realized it was perhaps one of his favorites: 2001: A Space Odyssey. Go figure the theater was almost empty. You could ask anyone, Dib would go on and on about how he interpreted the ending, and how his plans for a functioning HAL-9000 were set for the near future.

Zim was both fascinated and confused by the movie, but he seemed to like it to an extent. He stood up and yelled when he didn't understand something, but that was just normal Zim behavior. 

GIR, however, was a mess. The little robot cried all the way through, excluding the part where HAL was shut down, where he laughed mostly and sang his own rendition of Daisy Bell. 

"And then... GRAH! Why did Dave shut down the HAL? He seemed like a functioning computer!" Zim seemed especially shaken up by the thoughts of removing things that may be defective, for reasons that escaped Dib. 

"I liked the part where the monkey ate the corn and he did like this!" GIR giggled, spinning his head and feet at such odd angles that could make even the least suspicious person pause. But of course, nobody was looking.

"No, GIR, you did that. Just now."

"Oh." The defective robot sat down and let Zim drag him across the sidewalk, face flopped into the concrete.

The remains of the walk to Dib's house was filled with chatter on the movie, which I will graciously spare you the details of and simply tell you that the two were fucking geeks.

However, instead of leaving Dib at the doorstep, Zim and GIR followed him in.

"Zim, you can go. I'm home." Dib gestured to... well, his home.

"We understand that, Dib," Despite literally just going on a date with the other, Zim still filled his voice with malice when he had to say his name. "But the computer needs more time to repair, no thanks to GIR. Anyways, I was thinking that I would bless you further with even more of my presence! And GIR." The SIR unit waved.

Dib sighed. He was tired of all this shit and just wanted to go into his room to question his feelings, but he didn't know how to say no without Zim finding a way to twist it or break the door to get in, so he pulled open the door. "Come in?" The words physically hurt to come out of his mouth.

Zim nodded, grinning. Within less than three seconds, he had joined Gaz on the couch, pressing buttons on the second controller, GIR joining him on the third.

Gaz turned to Dib, not looking up. "Dib. If your boyfriend or his dog ruin any of my games," She grabbed his shirt and pulled him down so they were face-to-face, looking each other in the eyes. "You. Will. Pay."

Dib, still horrified from the last time Gaz had "made him pay," seized the controllers from Zim and GIR. "Y'know, uh, video games are... Anti... Alien propaganda. You shouldn't play them."

"WHAT?" Zim screamed, pushing himself away from the controllers in Dib's hands. "You filthy stinking game! How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!"  
He grabbed Gaz's Game Slave™️ from her hands, and slammed it on the floor. 

"NO-!" Dib screamed, pushing Zim off the Game Slave™️. 

It had the tiniest chip in the corner, and he could feel Gaz burning fire into the back of his enormous head. 

"Say, Zim, why don't we go to my room, like, right now hahah-" He grabbed Zim's arm and pulled him up the stairs. GIR, instead of following, sat next to Gaz.

"You can watch." She nodded to the little robot-dog, examining her console. "This is terrible. Dib, you WILL pay for this!" 

Dib barely had time to slam his door before he could hear his sister's shouts from downstairs. Forgetting for a split second that Zim was in the room with him, he slammed his body onto his bed, screaming a tiny bit. 

When he finally looked up, he noticed a certain Irken staring up at the posters in his room. "Wait... Zim?"

Zim turned to face him. "Ah, Dib. Nice to see you've decided you'd rather join me then yell like a pitiful fool-baby!"

Dib decided he needed another few minutes to yell like a pitiful fool baby. When he was finally done, he stood up besides Zim, who was admiring the Problem Sleuth poster. 

"Hey, Dib-thing, is this the same 'Problem Sleuth' as the one in the eighth grade?" Holy shit, he remembered eighth grade too.

"Yeah. You remember that?"

"Of course? Who could forget?" Zim cackled. "Your odd 'quadranting' system that insisted we hate-date and... The gray skin." He shuddered. "You looked like a f—"

"Okay that's enough about how I looked. Now, what I really want to know is what you did while I was... laying there." Dib hadn't realized the extent of just how long he'd given Zim time in his base unsupervised.

"I looked at this poster."

"For twenty minutes."

"Yes."

"That's a lie, Zim. I know you've been fucking around with my stuff!"

"How dare you accuse Zim of lying! I would never touch your garbage, Dib-thing. You make me sick."

"Exactly! You set this all up as a trick! I let my guard down like a fool! But I'm on to you, Zim."

"No? I don't know what you are talking about, Dib-smell. I did nothing to your base."

"Really, Zim? Really?"

"Yes."


	3. Chapter 3

Dib sighed- there was no use in arguing with Zim- so he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he actually had been looking at his Problem Sleuth poster for twenty minutes. 

He could have wondered about what Zim might have done forever, but that train was crashed barely after it left the station, due to a ear-splitting sound that sounded suspiciously like wood shattering into bits. 

"Gaz-" He yelled, darting out of the room with Zim hot on his heels, but a certain GIR stopped them in their tracks. The little robot had been thrown against the stairs until they had splintered, and there was ultimately no way for them to get back down. That wasn't a bad thing though, because Gaz stood at the feet of the steps, fuming.

"You!" She cried, pointing at Zim. "Your stupid dog would not shut up! He messed me up on the last stupid level!" Gaz's hands shook intensely, and she stared up at them with malice in her eyes.

They both were at a loss for words, but "they" did not happen to include GIR.   
I'm not exactly sure how recreate the noise they made as a word, so imagine a keysmash being screeched into your eyeballs. That's pretty much as close as I can get.

"Shut. The fuck. Up." She was pretty much screeching at this point, and the cracks on the Game Slave™️ she was holding seemed to grow by the millisecond. Zim, who had actually not said a word during this whole encounter, decided now would be as good a time as ever to pick up his little dog and get out, considering neither of the Membrane siblings were that happy with the current situation. 

"Alright, Dib-shit!" He declared. "I have had my fun and think it is time to replace GIR's toe bones. I'm sure they have lots of splinters in them." 

Dib raised an eyebrow, staring at their feet nubs. "He doesn't have toes."

"LIES! GIR has toes and has always had them! Your simple human brain could not comprehend the great complexity of GIR's toes!"

Dib wiped the other's spit off of his face, scowling. "Then I'm sure you've got a lot of work ahead of you. Get out."

"Eh? You dare ask Zim to leave and cease the blessing he is granting with his very presence?"

Dib screamed a lot internally, and a little bit externally too. He ripped the SIR unit up from their little dent in the stairs, pulling the wood they'd been sucking on with it, and grabbed the Irken by the glove.

He pulled them into his room and tossed them both out the window. Dib couldn't give less of a damn about their safety, and they were fine anyways. He collapsed back onto his bed- this time without the risk of a dumbass Irken fucking around behind his back.

—

"And then Dib was all 'GIR doesn't have toes!' and I just-"

GIR promptly began sobbing. "Masta, that story is so sad... Why this girl got no legs?"

Zim scowled. "GIR, there is no little girl- WHAT."

GIR had dragged a small girl inside, and she was quite lacking in the leg department. She was also lacking in the "being alive" department, because she was fucking dead. Fun.

Zim began to internally panic- he wasn't quite sure what to do here. "GIR! Get that... thing out of here!"

"Ooookie dokie!" GIR smiled, tossing the legless girl into one of the various tubes. She didn't seem to be moving, though, which was probably due to the awfully large pile of corn syrup they had gathered in this particular tube.

"Computer!" He screeched after a few minutes of waiting. "What is blocking the tunnel?" 

The computer sighed, as it always did when Zim asked it to do anything. "Blockage identified as: isoglucose."

"WHAT."

"Corn syrup. It's corn syrup."

Zim turned his head to stare at GIR, who blinked and smiled innocently- if you could even call someone that bought gallons of corn syrup and hidden it in a pipe anything even close to innocent. 

"I wanted some liquid corns, but they lied! THE! CORN! SYRUP! IS! LIE!" GIR sobbed aggressively, slamming their paws and kicking their toes(?) against the shittily tiles floor. 

The Irken was basically trembling at this point; he'd been angry with GIR- hell, when was he not angry with GIR? But this was to a much higher extent than before. They'd messed up every single, god-forsaken aspect of today, and that dead body really stunk. 

"Computer! Remove the liquid co-isoglucose, and that body, at once! And you." He turned to face the defective SIR, who was dutifully staring into the cushions of their couch as if their life depended on it. "You are not to move until Zim returns! Got it?"

GIR saluted, eyes red, but their gaze remained hyper-fixated upon the couch. 

Zim nearly ran out of the room as soon as the last word left his mouth. He could deal with a little gore, but the legless human GIR had dragged in actually forced a slight amount of discomfort out of him. 

By the time he reached his lab, he felt slightly better, as if being relieved of its presence would fix his other glaring problem- the Dib thing. 

Zim knew that he'd rather think about Dib and whatever weird garbage was going on there than work, and thus no work was accomplished. 

Zim didn't know if he "liked" Dib, mainly because he wasn't supposed to like anyone. He also knew he wasn't an invader, but that didn't stop him from plotting Earth's invasion regardless. It wasn't to impress the Tallest anymore, or even out of loyalty to the Irken Empire, but instead because he enjoyed carrying them out, and he had enjoyed playing around with Dib whilst doing so, even if that hadn't happened for years at this point.

Zim began scribbling a new plan to invade Earth, and it wasn't bad by any means. Hell, even past Zim could have carried it out and not fucked himself over. But it was scrapped regardless, and he moved on to another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the! corn! syrup! is! lie!
> 
> anyways sorry it's not longer, it's just been too long since the last update


End file.
